Web conferences are used in a variety of business, government, organizations and personal applications. Web conferences offer functions and capabilities beyond audio communication, providing a virtual meeting experience that approaches a face-to-face meeting. Web conferences generally offer functions that include audio communication, video, images, shared visual resources, dynamic texting, and downloading/uploading of materials. Those using web conferences benefit from having a near-face-to-face experience for a fraction of the cost and time to travel for meeting purposes.
Web conferencing usually involves one or more servers that may host a web conferencing application, and client devices that connect to the web application by means of a network such as the Internet. Examples of web conferencing services that are available include Citrix GoToMeeting, (a product of Citrix Online, LLC; a division of Citrix Systems Inc.), and WebEx Meetings Premium (WebEx is a registered trademark of Cisco Systems, Inc.).
Participants are typically notified of a web conference by receiving an invitation that includes the scheduling information, such as the date and time of the web conference, and access information for connecting to the web conference. Access information generally includes a universal resource locator (URL) link to access a login page of a website on the Internet, for example, and may include a web conference title and passcode.
Participants typically have or are given a means of authentication and information used to access the web conference, which may include a web link, a web conference title, and a passcode. The web conference information may be provided in an invitation that specifies the date, time and access information to the web conference, and separate invitations may be sent for separate web conferences.
There may be different roles or classes of participants that may include the host, presenter(s), discussion leaders, moderator and participants, for example. Web conferences are usually scheduled by a host or moderator, having greater privileges and control within the web conference than standard participants. The web conference information can be inadvertently or intentionally shared with others not invited directly by the web conference host, giving access to an not authorized participant.
For some web conferences, a host may require the ability to schedule ad-hoc, with a high amount of flexibility, without the need to work with or through a scheduling service. In such instances, the host may use a constant set of web conference information that allows the host to schedule a web conference for any time, and allows for scheduling web conferences such that the start of a second web conference continuously follows a first web conference. In and example, in which a second web conference continuously follows a first web conference, the participants of the first web conference that remain connected to the web conference channel have access to the second web conference that follows, by default. The terminology of “continuously following”, used herein, refers to the scheduling of a second web conference that follows a first web conference such that participants of the first web conference remaining on the conference channel, have access to the second web conference by default.
To prevent inadvertent participation from one meeting to the next, some web conference controls remove all participants from the current web conference, requiring all participants to reconnect to a subsequent web conference, which consumes time, generally creates a level of disorder, and may introduce an additional level of connectivity issues, all affecting the efficiency of the subsequent web conference. In addition, there generally is little preventing not authorized participants who have access to the connection information from connecting to the web conference.